Hi there! This is Alias Medron again with some graphic reviews. Today I will try to analyse the graphics that competed at the North Party 7 in October 2002.

Just in case you don't know the results yet, here they are quickly:
1st place: "Final Fight" by Katon
2nd place: "Untitled?" by Crazy Pepe
3rd place: "A Woman" by Spider
There were also two other graphics released, but one was at the very early workstage, and the other one was a clean conversion, so I won't comment them (I guess they both were disqualified).

"FINAL FIGHT" by KATON

This picture is drawn in the IFLI format and presents a scene which I think was shown at the end of the "Final Fight" game (or was in the beginning? ...never mind). Anyway, Katon made a high detailed picture here and he has put a lot of work in it. Three figures, a car and a building in the rear are shown and all this is mixed with some quite psychedelic colormixes and transitions (when I say psychedelic I just mean that there are some colormixes that look random chosen BUT fit very nicely together). My favourite part of the picture is the car, which seems to be the part Katon worked at most. The only thing I don't like that much is the face of one figure. The colors used have a low contrast (compared to each other) and so the face looks unfocused and blurry. Maybe some darker spots would give a better feeling.

The overall impression is very good though and I think it desreved the first place. So, thumbs up for Katon.

"UNTITLED?" by CRAZY PEPE

And we come to the second placed picture of this party. This time we see a two screens high multicolor picture. I personally think that scrolled pictures shouldn't be allowed in gfx compos, but that's another story.

Crazy Pepe's picture represents a man, who fights with some kind of octopus (we see just the tentacles). The picture is drawn in dark colors and has no background, just a black area instead, but it does the job quite well. The techniques used here are pure oldskool pixeling and remind me on opening screens of late 80's games. I just miss the detail in many areas of the picture (especially the fighter's face and his raised fist), also some colormixes and fadings could need some work in my opinion and some outlines could have been smoother. But the overall feeling is satisfying.

I wanted to mention that many painters don't work that much on the scrolled pictures they paint ('xept of Valsary) and especially on the outlines. I've seen many scrolled pics that have almost no antialiasing at all. That could be because the viewer doesn't have the time to study the picture in detail while it scrolls over the screen... or just because the artist is bored. At least this picture isn't wired (hi Rayden).

Overall feeling: thumbs up (not all of them though :)).

"A WOMAN" by SPIDER

This is the last entry in the gfx compo at NP7. A picture that surprised me because it is very simple on the technical side and at the same time very emotional and expressive. The picture is in plain multicolor. It contains an unfocused face on the background and a figure (a woman?) stairing at it in the foreground. The figure is in plain black so only the outlines are there and it makes a nice contrast to the rest of the picture. The whole is kept in dark colors, except of one or two points that fit nicely. One could say that this picture is just an early workstage but I think it is exactly as it should. More detail would spoil the melancholic feeling, which is in my opinion what the artist wanted to show.

So, a nice picture that counts more on the emotions it can reproduce and not on the pixeling techniques of the painter. In my opinion this could deserve the second place aswell. Well done, Spider!